lo ,  f1J  J  if 


LIBRARY  OF  THE  THEOLOGICAL  SEMINARY 


PRINCETON,  N.  J. 


Section     »  VsJ  jU    / 

Copy  J 


The  Bible 
The  Book  of  T^Iankind 


BY 


Rev.  Benjamin  B.  Warfield,  D.D.,  LL.D.,  Lit.D. 

Professor  of  Didactic  and  Polemic  Theology,  Prince- 
ton Theological  Seminary,  Princeton,  New  Jersey 


A  Paper  Read  at  the  World's  Bible  Congress 

held  at  the 

Panama-Pacific  Exposition,  San  Francisco,  Cal. 
August  1-4,  1915 


AMERICAN  BIBLE  SOCIETY 

NEW   YORK 

1915 


The  Bible,  the  Book  of  Mankind 


A  DOLF  HARNACK,  in  repelling  the  proposal  that  the  faculties  of 
-/tl  Theology  in  the  German  Universities  should  cease  to  be  faculties 
of  distinctively  Christian  Theology,  and  become  faculties  of  Theology  in 
general — without  special  reference  to  any  particular  religion — points  out 
that  Christianity's  place  is  not  so  much  among  as  above  the  other  religions. 
He  that  does  not  know  it,  says  he,  knows  none;  and  he  who  knows  it  in 
its  historical  development  knows  all.  Chief  among  the  characteristics  by 
which  it  elevates  itself  above  other  religions,  he  emphasises  this  one :  that 
Christianity  has  the  Bible — the  book  of  the  ancient  world,  the  book  of  the 
Middle  Ages,  and  (though  not  perhaps  in  the  market-place)  the  book  of 
these  new  days  of  ours.  What  does  Homer  matter,  he  asks ;  what  the 
Vedas ;  what  the  Koran,  in  comparison  with  the  Bible  ?  And  how  inex- 
haustible it  is !  Every  succeeding  period  discovers  new  aspects  of  it,  and 
every  new  search  into  its  depths  raises  the  inward  life  of  Christendom 
to  a  higher  level.  What  Harnack  means  is  perhaps  expressed  in  some- 
what crisper  phrase  by  Martin  Kaehler,  when  he  declares  that  history  has 
written  in  shining  letters  on  the  forefront  of  the  Bible,  "This  is  man- 
kind's book."  Other  books  may  belong  to  a  people,  an  age,  a  stage  of 
human  development;  this  book  belongs  to  all  peoples,  all  ages  and  all 
stages  of  growth,  whether  of  the  individual  or  of  the  race — unifying  them 
all  and  welding  them  into  one  vitalized  and  vitalizing  whole.  The  Bible 
is,  by  way  of  eminence,  the  book  of  humanity. 

The  Bible  did  not  begin,  indeed,  as  a  world-book.  The  Jewish  Bible 
was  the  book  of  a  people,  and  was  written  in  the  tongue  of  a  people. 
An  earnest  of  what  was  to  come  was  given,  it  is  true,  when  this  book  of 
a  people  began  in  the  third  century  before  Christ  to  clothe  itself  in  a 
world-language.  The  rendering  of  the  Hebrew  Bible  into  Greek  has  an 
immense  significance  in  the  history  of  civilization,  as  the  first  important 
attempt  in  the  region  of  Mediterranean  culture  to  translate  from  one  lan- 
guage into  another.  It  thus  became  at  once  a  symbol  and  an  instrument  of 
the  unification  of  the  peoples.  Of  far  more  importance  was  it,  however,  in 
the  development  of  religion  among  men.  Its  meaning  here  was  nothing 
less  than  this — that  the  diffusion  of  the  Jewish  people  through  the  earth 
should  not  spell  loss  to  the  religion  of  revelation,  but  its  entrance  as  leaven 
into  the  world.  The  Jews,  scattered  among  the  nations,  might  lose  their 
language,  but  not  their  religion.  Their  religion,  on  the  contrary,  was  to 
go  with  them,  and  through  them  was  to  work  upon  men  of  every  race  and 
of  every  clime.  The  Greek  version  of  the  Old  Testament  thus  became  a 
bond  which  held  the  Jewish  diaspora  firmly  to  the  religion  of  revelation, 
and  as  well  a  powerful  ferment  in  the  life  of  the  peoples  into  contact  with 
whom  it  was  brought.    Thus  it  prepared  the  way  for  Christianity. 


The  Bible,  the  Book  of  Mankind 


It  did  not  as  yet,  however,  become  a  world-book.  That  the  Old  Tes- 
tament could  not  become  without  the  New.  It  was  only  by  being  taken 
up  into  that  Evangel  which  was  "to  course  and  range  through  all  the 
world,"  that  it  could  become  a  portion  of  the  Bible  of  mankind.  So 
long  as  the  Kingdom  of  God  was  like  a  pent-in  stream,  the  book  of  that 
Kingdom  must  needs  be  the  book  of  a  race,  the  race  chosen  of  God  to 
be  his  people  during  those  days  of  mere  conservation.  Its  passage  into 
a  world-language  could  at  most  dig  the  canal  through  which  the  universal 
gospel  might  afterwards  flow  out  to  water  the  earth.  This  the  Greek 
Old  Testament  did.  For,  if  the  Greek  language  did  something  for  it,  it 
in  turn  did  much  for  the  Greek  language.  It  taught  it  to  speak  the 
great  things  of  God.  It  was  only,  however,  when  the  barriers  were 
broken  down,  and  the  stream  rushed  forth  to  overspread  the  world,  the 
Spirit  of  the  Lord  driving  it,  that  the  book  in  which  was  embodied  the 
Word  of  the  Kingdom  could  become  veritably  a  world-book.  It  was  no 
accident  that  the  Christian  Bible  was  a  Greek  Bible.  Greek  was  at  the 
time  the  lingua  franca  of  the  civilized  world,  and  the  universal  gospel 
naturally  clothed  itself  in  this  world-tongue.  But  even  the  lingua  franca 
of  the  civilized  world  did  not  suffice  the  Bible.  It  was  the  world,  not  the 
civilized  world,  which  was  "  the  field"  in  which  the  seed  of  the  Kingdom 
was  sown  and,  within  the  civilized  world,  the  whole  body  of  the  people, 
not  that  "upper  crust"  which  had  found  it  convenient  to  communicate 
with  one  another  in  a  common  speech.  The  gospel  penetrated  through 
every  stratum  and  spread  outward  from  land  to  land.  As  it  worked  its 
way  thus  intensively  and  extensively,  the  book  in  which  it  was  enshrined 
became  ever  more  and  more  obviously  the  world's  book. 

We  can  observe  its  progress  toward  this  result  from  the  earliest  years 
of  the  gospel  proclamation.  Wherever  the  gospel  went,  there  the  book 
is  found;  not  as  an  exotic  treasure,  however  precious,  but  as  a  leaven 
buried  in  the  very  substance  of  humanity  and  working  through  the  whole 
lump.  Wherever  it  went,  it  went  as  the  people's  book;  energizing  at  the 
bases  of  the  people's  life  and  lifting  the  whole  mass  upward  into  new  in- 
tellectual, ethical,  spiritual  vitality.  And  wherever  it  went,  it  established 
itself  as  at  only  a  new  frontier  station  whence  it  ever  pushed  yet  farther 
beyond.  In  the  West  it  became  a  Latin  book.  Not  at  Rome,  indeed; 
for  Rome  was  in  those  early  days  of  Christianity  a  Greek  city,  and  the 
Roman  Church  a  Greek  Church  nourishing  itself  on  the  Greek  Bible :  its 
very  Bishops  commonly  bore  Greek  names  and  when  Latin  names  occur 
among  them  they  are  disguised  in  Greek  forms  (Xystus).  But  in  the 
outlying  provinces,  North  Africa  first,  where  Latin  was  the  speech  of  the 
people;  and  where,  in  the  form  in  which  the  people  spoke  it,  it  became 
the  speech  of  this  book  of  the  people.  Out  from  these  beginnings  it 
made  its  way  to  dominate  a  whole  civilization  for  a  millennium  and  a 
half.     In  the  East  it  became  a  Syriac  book,  and  the  service  which  the 


The  Bible,  the  Book  of  Mankind 


Latin  Bible  rendered  in  the  West,  the  Syriac  Bible  rendered  to  another 
civilization  in  the  East.  The  extent  of  the  influence  of  the  Syriac  Bible 
was  bounded  only  by  the  limits  of  the  Eastern  world.  Copies  of  it  have 
come  down  to  us  from  Egypt,  from  Malabar,  from  China  itself.  "  A  whole 
series  of  peoples,"  we  are  told,  "received  from  the  Syrians  writing, 
the  alphabet,  and  the  Scriptures."  In  the  South  it  became  a  Coptic 
book,  perhaps  first  breaking  effectively  down  the  barriers  of  the  cumbrous 
old  script  which  confined  the  possession  of  letters  to  a  cast,  and  giving  to 
Egypt,  mother  of  letters,  an  alphabet  which  even  the  meanest  might  read. 
In  the  North  it  made  its  way  if  more  slowly  yet  with  equal  sureness,  to 
the  unlettered  hordes  which  swarmed  beyond  the  bounds  of  civilization : 
to  the  Goths  and  the  Georgians,  the  Armenians  and  the  Slavs,  creating 
for  its  use  in  each  case  an  alphabet  and  written  speech. 

It  was  thus  that  the  Bible  began  to  make  itself  the  book  of  the  world  a 
millennium  and  a  half  ago ;  not  waiting  for  civilization  to  prepare  the  road 
for  it,  but  itself  breaking  the  path  for  civilization;  knowing  no  difference 
between  cultivated  and  uncultivated,  but  seizing  upon  all  alike  and  lifting 
all  alike  to  its  own  level.  From  that  day  to  this,  with  whatever  slacken- 
ings in  the  rate  of  its  progress,  or  even  interruptions  of  it,  it  has  advanced 
on  the  same  lines.  As  the  world  grew  ever  bigger  it  has  grown  with 
equal  ceaselessness  ever  more  expansive ;  until  to-day  it  is  not  the  Bible 
of  the  Mediterranean  basin  or  of  the  Eurasian  world,  but  of  the  whole 
round  globe.  It  may  sound  cold  and  unsignificant  to  say  that  it  has  now 
been  rendered  into  all  the  chief  languages  of  mankind.  It  may  perhaps 
have  more  meaning  to  us  to  say  that  it  may  be  read  to-day  in  more  than 
five  hundred  human  tongues.  Perhaps,  however,  it  will  be  most  intelligible 
if  we  say  that  the  Bible  is  accessible  to-day  to  three-quarters  of  the  human 
race  in  its  own  mother  speech.  It  is  only  natural  that,  in  the  presence 
of  this  stupendous  fact  of  the  transfusion  of  the  Bible  into  the  languages 
of  the  earth,  men  should  think  of  the  miracle  of  Pentecost  and  see  that 
miracle  projecting  itself  through  the  ages.  Tennyson  strikes  a  note  to 
which  all  our  hearts  respond  when  he  places  on  the  lips  of  his  Wycliffite 
hero  the  apostrophe  : 

"  Heaven-sweet  Evangel,  ever-living  word, 
Who  whilome  spakest  to  the  South  in  Greek 
About  the  soft  Mediterranean  shores, 
And  then  in  Latin  to  the  Latin  crowd, 
As  good  need  was— thou  hast  come  to  talk  our  isle. 
Hereafter  thou,  fulfilling  Pentecost, 
Must  learn  to  use  the  tongues  of  all  the  world." 

After  five  hundred  years  we  look  not  forward  but  back  upon  this  great 
achievement.  The  miracle  has  been  accomplished,  and  now  it  is  but  a 
slight  exaggeration  to  say  that  every  man  may  hear  the  mighty  things  of 
God  in  his  own  language  in  which  he  was  born. 

It  goes  without  saying  that  the  diffusion  of  the  Bible  throughout  the 


6  The  Bible,  the  Book  of  Mankind 

world  might  be  a  matter  of  little  moment—scarcely  more  than  an  inter- 
esting fact  in  literary  history — if,  on  becoming,  above  all  other  books, 
the  book  of  the  peoples,  it  did  not  at  the  same  time  become  everywhere, 
above  all  other  books,  the  book  of  the  people.  It  has  already  repeatedly 
been  made  incidentally  plain,  however,  that  the  Bible  has  been  every- 
where, above  everything  else,  the  people's  book.  This  is  the  signifi- 
cance, for  example,  of  the  particular  form  in  which  the  Latin  Bible  came 
into  existence.  The  Latin  Bible  was,  in  its  origin,  nothing  so  little  as  a 
literary  performance.  It  was  simply  the  Greek  Bible  transfused  by  the 
Latin-speaking  people  into  whose  hands  it  came  into  their  own  everyday 
speech  for  their  own  familiar  use.  So  redolent  of  the  soil  was  it  that  it 
was  a  sad  stumbling-block  to  the  cultured.  Ex  ungue  leonem:  the  world 
has  never  known  a  book  so  distinctively  a  people's  book  as  the  Bible  has 
been  since  its  origin.  In  this  sense  Christians  have  been  from  the  first, 
above  all  other  people  who  have  lived  in  the  world,  the  people  of  a  book. 
The  book  and  the  people  have  been  bound  so  closely  together  that  we 
hardly  know  whether  it  were  juster  to  say  that  where  Christianity  has 
gone  there  the  Bible  has  gone,  or  that  where  the  Bible  has  gone  there 
Christianity  has  gone.  In  the  first  age  of  the  Church,  pre-eminently, 
the  Christian  and  his  book  were  inseparable.  The  Bible  was  not  so  much 
the  book  of  the  Church  as  the  book  of  the  Christian;  and  from  the  cradle 
to  the  grave  every  Christian  was  expected  to  keep  it  in  his  hand  and  in 
his  heart,  to  live  in  and  by  it.  The  writings  of  the  Fathers  are  crowded 
with  exhortations,  both  formal  and  incidental,  to  diligent  Bible-reading 
on  the  part  of  all.  The  reason  given  is  most  significant.  Those  who 
were  taught  by  others  were  taught  of  men;  those  who  took  the  Bible 
for  their  teacher  were  taught  of  God.  They  were  " '  theodidactoi"  God- 
taught,  listening  immediately  to  him  speaking  in  his  Word.  "The 
deepest  and  ultimate  reason  why  every  Christian  should  read  the  Bible," — 
so  Harnack  expounds  the  sentiment  of  the  first  Christian  ages — "lies  in 
this,  that,  just  as  everyone  should  speak  to  God  as  often  as  possible,  so 
also  everyone  should  listen  to  God  as  often  as  possible.  Oratio  and 
lectio  belong  together ;  so  we  read  in  countless  passages  from  the  later 
Fathers,  but  Cyprian  had  already  said  it  quite  clearly.  He  wrote  to 
Donatus  (c.  15):  'Be  assiduous  in  both  prayer  and  reading;  in  the  one 
you  speak  to  God,  in  the  other  God  speaks  to  you.'  " 

No  doubt,  it  was  as  possible  then  as  it  is  now  to  honor  the  Bible  in 
appearance  rather  than  in  fact.  As  we  may  find  to-day  great  "family 
Bibles"  encumbering  the  "  parlor-tables"  of  households  little  interested 
in  their  contents,  so  we  read  of  sumptuous  Bibles  then,  written  in  gold 
letters  on  purple  vellum  and  glittering  with  gems,  which  were  kept  for 
show  rather  than  for  use.  But  this  very  practice  among  the  wealthy  is  a 
speaking  evidence  of  the  value  universally  placed  upon  the  book.  It  was 
the  family-book  above  every  other.     Husbands  and  wives  read  it  daily 


The  Bible,  the  Book  of  Mankind 


together  and  Tertullian  knows  no  stronger  argument  against  mixed  mar- 
riages than  that  in  their  case  this  cherished  pleasure  must  be  foregone. 
The  children  were  introduced  to  the  Bible  from  the  tenderest  age.  They 
learned  their  letters  by  picking  them  out  from  its  pages.  They  were 
practiced  in  putting  syllables  together  on  the  Bible  names,  the  Genealo- 
gies in  the  opening  chapters  of  Matthew  and  Luke  supplying  (one  would 
think  most  umpromising)  material  for  this  exercise.  They  formed  their  first 
sentences  by  combining  words  into  Bible  phrases.  As  they  clung  about 
their  mothers'  necks,  we  are  told,  amid  the  kisses  they  snatched,  they 
snatched  also  the  music  of  the  Psalms  from  their  lips.  Every  little  girl 
of  seven  was  expected  to  have  already  made  a  beginning  of  learning  the 
Psalms  by  heart ;  and,  as  she  grew  to  maturity  she  should  lay  up  pro- 
gressively in  her  heart  the  words  of  the  Books  of  Solomon,  the  Gospels, 
the  Apostles  and  the  Prophets.  Little  boys,  too,  traveling  through  the 
years,  should  travel  equally  through  the  Sacred  Books.  We  hear  again 
and  again  of  men  who  knew  the  whole  Bible  by  heart.  There  were,  for 
example,  the  deacon  Valens  of  Jerusalem,  and  the  blind  Egyptian,  John, 
of  whom  Eusebius  tells  us.  "  He  possessed,"  says  the  historian  of  the 
latter,  "whole  books  of  the  Holy  Scripture,  not  on  tables  of  stone,  as  the 
divine  Apostle  says,  nor  on  skins  of  beasts,  or  on  paper  which  moth  and 
time  can  devour,  but — in  his  heart,  so  that,  as  from  a  rich  literary 
treasure,  he  could,  even  as  he  would,  repeat  now  passages  from  the  Law 
and  the  Prophets,  now  from  the  historical  books,  now  from  the  Gospels 
and  Apostolical  Epistles."  Memory,  however,  was  not  to  be  solely  de- 
pended upon :  the  Bible  was  not  to  be  studied  once  for  all  and  then  neg- 
lected. It  must  be  the  Christian  man's  constant  companion  through 
life.  It  was  to  be  read  continually,  read  day  by  day,  and  year  after  year; 
visited  unceasingly  as  a  fresh  fountain  from  which  to  quaff  living  water. 
To  this  extent  Christians  were  the  people  of  a  book ;  and  to  this  extent 
the  book  was  the  people's  book. 

There  was  nothing,  however,  esoteric  in  this  devotion  of  the  Chris- 
tians to  their  Bible.  The  Bible  was  not  so  conceived  as  the  Christians' 
book  that  they  desired  to  keep  it  to  themselves.  Rather,  reading  it 
themselves  thus  diligently,  they  wished  everyone  else  to  read  it,  too. 
Finding  it  the  source  of  life  for  themselves  they  ardently  desired  that 
others  also  should  drink  at  its  inexhaustible  fountains.  The  missionary 
value  of  the  Bible  was  well  understood.  Its  translation  into  other  lan- 
guages, Augustine,  for  example,  looks  upon  as  essentially  a  missionary 
act :  God  had  given  it  originally  in  Greek  only  as  an  ad  interim  provi- 
sion— the  Greek  Bible  was  merely  the  central  reservoir  whence  it  should 
flow  out  in  translation  to  all  the  world.  And  nothing  was  closer  to  the 
hearts  of  Christians  than  that  the  heathen  among  whom  they  lived  should 
be  induced  to  read  the  Bible.  We  are  told  that  "  Trypho  is  the  first  Jew 
and  Celsus  the  first  Greek  whom  we  know  to  have  read  the  Gospels." 


8  The  Bible,  the  Book  of  Mankind 

But  this  only  means  that  they  are  the  first  Jew  and  the  first  Greek  that 
we  happen  to  know  of,  who  read  the  Scriptures  and  remained  unconvinced. 
How  many  in  the  meantime  had  read  and  believed !  As  the  same  writer 
reminds  us,  "  Aristides,  the  earliest  of  the  Apologists,  exhorts  his  heathen 
readers,  after  reading  his  own  work,  to  take  into  their  hands  and  to  read 
the  Holy  Scriptures  themselves  (XVI.).  This  appeal  to  the  Holy  Scrip- 
tures runs  through  all  the  Apologies,  from  the  earliest  to  the  latest,  and 
shows  that  their  authors  were  united  in  the  belief  that  the  regular  way  to 
become  a  convinced  Christian  was  to  read  the  Holy  Scriptures.  In  this 
way  Justin  (Dial.  7)  and  Tatian  (Orat.  29)  and  Theophilus  (Ad  Autol. 
i.  14)  expressly  say  that  they  themselves  became  Christians."  And  again, 
for  a  little  later  time  :  "  The  Church  was  ever  most  anxious  that  the 
Bible  should  be  open  and  accessible  even  to  the  heathen;  for  she  had 
again  and  again  learned  by  experience  that  the  Bible  was  her  best  mis- 
sionary. The  conversions  of  Hilary  (de  Trinitate,  i.  5.  10)  and  Victori- 
nus  (Augustine,  Confess.  VIII.,  2.4)  in  Rome  were  notable  examples; 
these  men  had  been  led  to  the  Church  by  the  Holy  Scriptures."  We 
cannot  avoid  perceiving  that  in  the  first  age  of  Christianity  the  Bible  was, 
and  was  understood  to  be,  the  seed  of  the  Church. 

We  do  not,  however,  half  appreciate  the  significance  of  the  position 
taken  by  the  Bible  from  the  first  as  the  book  of  the  people,  until  we  re- 
mind ourselves  of  some  of  the  difficulties  it  required  to  surmount  in  es- 
tablishing itself  in  this  position.  These  first  days  of  the  Church  were 
not  the  days  of  the  printing-press,  with  its  rapid  and  cheap  multiplication  of 
books.  Nor  were  they  the  days  of  universal  education.  We  may  well 
wonder  where  the  Bibles  came  from  to  be  read  by  the  people,  and  where 
the  people  came  from  able  to  read  the  Bibles.  The  triumph  of  the  Bible 
over  these  difficulties — a  triumph  which  has  been  repeated  until  it  has  be- 
come a  matter  of  course  — marks  the  introduction  of  the  Bible  into  the 
world  as  easily  the  greatest  event  that  has  ever  occurred  in  the  history  of 
the  diffusion  of  literature,  and  just  as  easily  the  most  powerful  educative 
force  which  has  ever  entered  humanity. 

We  lack  materials  for  tracing  in  detail  the  processes  by  which  the  req- 
uisite supply  of  Bibles  was  produced.  We  can  only  note  with  wonder 
the  fact  that  the  miracle  was  wrought.  The  publishing  trade  was  highly 
developed  and  most  efficient,  and  no  doubt  it  knew  how  to  take  advan- 
tage of  so  great  a  demand.  In  the  fourth  century  we  see  the  publishers 
"  taking  up  "  popular  Christian  books  with  the  most  businesslike  avidity, 
and  "  pushing  "  them  with  a  vigor  which  the  most  energetic  modern  pub- 
lisher could  scarcely  surpass.  There  has  even  come  down  to  us  from 
the  middle  of  the  fourth  century  a  "  list  "  of  a  "  Bible  House,"  containing 
information  designed  to  protect  the  purchaser  from  the  wiles  of  too  en- 
terprising book-sellers.  Pious  persons  gave  themselves  to  the  work  of 
copying  the  Scriptures  and  this  came  to  be  the  chief  occupation  of  ascet- 


The  Bible,  the  Book  of  Mankind 


ics.  Good  men  had  Bibles  made  for  them  to  present  to  the  needy.  We 
are  told,  for  example,  of  Eusebius'  friend  Pamphilus,  the  great  Christian 
bibliophile  of  his  day,  that  he  kept  a  store  of  Bibles  by  him  which  he  gave 
to  those  who  desired  them;  and  that  "not  only  to  men,  but  also  to 
women  whom  he  saw  to  be  given  to  reading."  No  doubt,  especially  in 
the  earliest  days  of  the  faith,  many  zealous  believers  wrote  out  the  Bible, 
or  parts  of  it,  with  their  own  hands  that  they  might  possess  copies  of 
their  own.  Papyrus  sheets  have  come  down  to  us  from  the  early  fourth 
century,  painfully  traced  out  in  an  unpracticed  hand,  which  may  be  a  frag- 
ment of  such  a  personally  made  Bible,  though  Messrs.  Grenfell  and 
Hunt  think  them  rather  a  school-boy's  exercise — which  would  give  them 
almost  as  much  significance. 

However  the  Bibles  were  supplied,  they  were  supplied;  and  to  this 
miracle  the  even  greater  one  was  added  of  the  creation  of  a  reading  pub- 
lic for  them.  It  is  too  little  to  say,  as  Harnack  says,  that  by  the  univer- 
sal zeal  for  Bible-reading  "  a  powerful  stimulus  was  given  to  the  exten- 
sion of  the  art  of  reading,"  and  so,  in  an  age  of  decaying  education,  the 
Church  "became  the  great  elementary  school-mistress  of  the  Greeks  and 
Romans."  The  Church  not  only  stayed  the  downward  progress  of  edu- 
cation and  increased  the  number  of  readers,  but,  by  its  demand  that  the 
Bible  should  be  read  by  all  ranks  and  classes  and  sexes  and  ages,  intro- 
duced the  principle  of  universal  education  into  the  world  and  advanced 
far  toward  making  it  a  realized  fact.  The  service  of  the  Bible  to  the 
Greek  and  Roman  people — the  people  as  such,  the  "  submerged  masses," 
as  we  say — was,  therefore,  hardly  less  than  that  which  it  rendered  to  the 
outlying  barbarians,  to  whom  it  for  the  first  time  gave  letters  and  a  writ- 
ten tongue.  It  made  them  literate.  Thus  the  Bible  became  the  mother 
of  truly  popular  education.  Has  there  ever  been  a  greater  revolution 
wrought  in  the  intellectual  history  of  the  race  ? 

It  is  true  that  the  conquest  thus  begun  was  not  pushed  steadily  to  its 
end;  the  ground  gained  was  not  even  retained  without  interruption. 
After  awhile  a  great  misfortune  befell  the  Church.  It  lost  its  Bible- 
reading  public.  Happier  in  this  than  the  East,  the  West  needed  at 
first  but  a  single  version.  It  made  no  Punic  Bible,  nor  an  Iberian  or  a 
Celtic  Bible  ;  and  the  reason  was  that,  bound  together  in  the  common  use 
of  the  Latin  tongue,  the  needs  of  all  the  Western  peoples  were  met  by 
the  Latin  Bible.  But  hardly  had  it  fully  possessed  the  field  than  the 
irruption  of  the  barbarians  swept  away  its  literate  public.  Then  began 
a  long  period  of  schism,  between  the  Church  and  the  people;  a  Latin 
Church  and  an  ever  increasingly  non-Latin  people.  Little  was  done  to 
close  the  constantly  widening  gulf.  Rather,  new  theories,  running  directly 
athwart  all  previous  Christian  feeling  and  practice,  were  invented  to  jus- 
tify it.  The  people  could  not  be  trusted  with  the  Scriptures.  The  un- 
couth speech  of  the  people  was  incapable  of  receiving  and  reproducing 


io  The  Bible,  the  Book  of  Mankind 

their  sacred  contents.  The  Latin  language  was  holy,  and  its  sounds  fell 
with  sacramental  effect  upon  the  ear.  We  appropriately  call  these  som- 
ber years  the  Dark  Ages. 

We  are  told  nowadays,  it  is  true,  that  there  never  were  any  Dark  Ages. 
We  rejoice  that  it  is  possible  to  paint  them  darker  than  they  were.  It  is 
very  largely  a  matter  of  point  of  sight.  Christendom  has  never  known  a 
time,  let  us  thank  God  for  it,  when  the  Bible  was  out  of  mind ;  when  its 
teaching  was  not  widely  diffused  and  was  not  powerfully  operative  in  the 
lives  of  men.  There  were  schools  in  the  Dark  Ages,  and  the  Bible  was  in 
a  very  true  sense  the  text-book  of  these  schools.  There  were  libraries — 
in  the  capitals,  in  the  universities,  in  the  monasteries— and  the  Bible  was 
to  be  had  in  these  libraries.  There  were  scriptoria,  and  the  Bible  was  dili- 
gently copied  in  these  scriptoria.  A  beginning  was  made  already  in  the 
eighth  century  of  translating  the  Bible  into  the  vernacular  languages,  and 
by  the  end  of  the  Middle  Ages  it  was  accessible  to  Frenchmen  and  Ger- 
mans, Englishmen  and  Bohemians,  Spaniards  and  Italians  and  Poles  in 
their  own  tongues.  Nearly  two  hundred  manuscripts  of  the  German  Bible 
and  almost  as  many  of  the  English  from  this  later  period  remain  to-day 
to  attest  the  wideness  of  their  use.  Printing  came  in  the  midst  of  the  fif- 
teenth century  and  W.  A.  Copinger  catalogues  a  hundred  and  forty-four 
editions  of  the  Latin  Bible  for  its  first  half  century;  and  for  the  sixteenth 
century  no  fewer  than  four  hundred  and  thirty-eight. 

But  how  many  there  were  to  whom  all  these  Bibles  were  sealed  books  ! 
How  closely  confined  their  use  was  to  a  class — the  clerics,  a  few  nobles, 
and  in  the  later  Middle  Ages  the  rising  middle-class  of  burghers !  At 
a  time  when  a  German  monarch  almost  passed  for  a  cleric  because  he 
could  read,  we  may  imagine  how  it  stood  with  the  laity.  And  at  a  time 
when  Bonaventura  vainly  applied  the  test  of  reading  to  a  candidate  for  a 
Bishopric  we  may  cherish  doubts  even  of  the  mass  of  the  clergy.  The 
libraries  of  the  late  Middle  Ages  were  well  stocked  with  Bibles,  and  they 
were  accessible  to  the  student  on  very  liberal  terms  ;  gifts  of  Bibles  were 
even  made  to  libraries  for  the  express  purpose  of  being  loaned  to  needy 
students — a  striking  evidence,  this,  of  the  scarcity  of  Bibles.  But  we  learn 
from  the  old  catalogues  of  libraries  published  by  S.  Becker,  for  example, 
that  "  a  royal  foundation  like  St.  Vaudrille,  about  the  year  800,  did  not  pos- 
sess a  complete  Bible,  and  Boniface  had  to  be  satisfied  with  parts."  The 
manuals  of  Biblical  instruction  used  in  the  schools  were  nearly  as  bad  as 
they  could  be :  Luther  calls  them  in  that  language,  more  vigorous  than 
elegant,  in  which  he  was  wont  to  release  his  indignation,  "  the  nonsensi- 
cal, good-for-nothing,  pernicious  monkish  books,  Catholicon,  Graecista, 
Florista,  and  such-like  asses-dung."  The  famous  "  Mammotrectus  "  is 
a  fair  example.  Composed  by  a  Minorite  at  the  end  of  the  thirteenth 
or  the  beginning  of  the  fourteenth  century,  it  held  its  place  in  the  schools 
until  the  end  of  the  sixteenth.    When  the  art  of  printing  came  in,  such  was 


The  Bible,  the  Book  of  Mankind  11 

the  demand  for  it  that  it  passed  through  at  least  thirty-four  editions  in  the 
fifteenth  century  and  was  still  being  printed  in  1596.  Its  author  piously 
represents  himself  as  pouring  out  the  results  of  his  studies  as  the  Mag- 
dalen poured  out  the  oil,  on  the  feet  of  his  Master.  Employing  another 
Biblical  illustration,  Sixtus  of  Sienna,  less  unctuously  but  with  more  de- 
scriptive force,  declares  that  "  like  the  poor  widow  who  out  of  her  want  cast 
two  pennies  into  the  treasury  of  the  temple,  this  brother  brought  to  the 
temple  of  the  Lord,  in  the  poverty  of  his  understanding— all  that  he  had." 
When  this  was  the  nature  of  the  provision  that  was  made  for  the  liter- 
ate, we  may  fancy  the  condition  of  the  illiterate,  that  is  to  say,  of  the  whole 
mass  of  the  people.  Keep  the  eye  fixed  on  the  literate  classes  and  we 
may  wonder  whether  the  Dark  Ages  were  quite  as  dark  as  we  have  been 
accustomed  to  think  them.  It  is  true  that  the  Bible  lay  at  the  very  foun- 
dation of  the  entire  social  structure  of  the  Middle  Ages.  It  is  true  that  it 
was  everywhere  in  the  background ;  and  that  it  was  working  powerfully 
in  the  whole  life  of  the  times.  It  is  true  that  it  was  everywhere  accessi- 
ble to  those  able  to  use  it.  Shift  the  eye  to  the  masses  and  a  very  differ- 
ent picture  meets  it.  No  doubt  the  Bible  was  not  without  its  influence  on 
the  masses,  too.  But  pervasive  and  powerful  as  that  influence  was,  it  was 
indirect,  by  percolation  from  above.  The  people  had  no  direct  contact 
with  the  Bible.  It  had  become  an  esoteric  book  of  which  they  knew  only 
by  hearsay.  Their  inability  to  read  cut  them  off  absolutely  from  all  im- 
mediate approach  to  it ;  and  the  employment  of  Latin  in  the  church  serv- 
ices deprived  them  even  of  the  opportunity  to  hear  portions  of  it  in  the 
lessons.  A  very  few  even  of  the  literate,  indeed,  could  ever  hope  to  pos- 
sess Bibles  of  their  own.  The  size  of  mediaeval  Bibles  was  immense. 
They  were  veritable  libraries,  deserving  literally  the  current  name  by 
which  they  were  known,  Bibliotheca  ;  consisting  of  four  or  five — in  one  in- 
stance of  fourteen — great  folio  volumes.  The  cost  of  the  production  of 
these  great  books  was  naturally  very  great,  and  the  price  they  commanded 
was  prohibitive  to  any  but  very  wealthy  purchasers.  If  we  understand  S. 
Berger's  account  rightly,  it  was  in  the  late  thirteenth  and  early  fourteenth 
century  a  very  cheap  Bible  indeed — such  as  could  only  rarely  be  had — 
which  cost  as  little  as  seventy-five  dollars  of  our  money ;  the  common 
price  ran  up  to  about  three  hundred  dollars.  We  know  of  such  values  as 
five  to  nine  hundred  dollars  being  placed  on  them  or  actually  paid  for 
them;  and  even  such  as  eighteen  hundred  to  two  thousand  dollars  in  the 
fourteenth  and  fifteenth  centuries.  Bibles  were  left  in  wills  as  precious 
bequests ;  they  were  put  in  pawn  for  the  performance  of  important  serv- 
ices; they  were  given  as  security  for  large  debts.  "  One  sees,"  remarks 
Bergef,  "from  these  prices,  what  we  otherwise  were  aware  of,  that  a 
country  priest  could  not  dream  of  possessing  a  Bible."  The  Bible  had 
become  the  peculiar  property  not  merely  of  the  literate  few,  but  of  the  few 
literate  who  were  rich.     The  poor  man  could  not  have  a  Bible,  and  com- 


12  The  Bible,  the  Book  of  Mankind 

monly  lived  and  died  without  ever  having  seen  one.  The  Bible  had  be- 
come to  the  people  only  a  tradition. 

The  vernacular  versions,  whether  of  the  Scriptures  or  of  the  church- 
offices,  which  were  from  time  to  time  attempted  or  executed  throughout  the 
Middle  Ages,  were  not  intended  for  the  "people  "  but  for  the  imperfectly 
educated  among  the  "  religious."  They  were  often,  indeed,  meant  particu- 
larly for  the  use  of  nuns,  who,  as  women,  had  not  received  a  Latin  train- 
ing. As  the  author  of  a  late  fourteenth  or  early  fifteenth  century  metrical 
version  of  the  "  Rule  of  St.  Benet  "  quite  simply  explains: 

"  Monks  and  else  all  learned  men 
In  Latin  may  it  lightly  ken, 
And  wit  thereby  how  they  shall  work 
To  serve"  God  and  holy  kirk. 
But  to  women  to  make  it  couth  (known) 
That  learn  no  Latin  in  their  youth, 
In  English  it  is  ordered  here 
So  that  they  may  it  lightly  lere." 

And  it  was  only  with  great  hesitation  that  even  "the  religious"  were 
put  in  possession  of  vernacular  versions.  There  was  the  fear  that  they 
might  misuse  them.  They  might,  for  example,  ease  the  penances  which 
were  imposed  on  them,  by  saying  the  Psalms  or  Matins  which  they  were 
required  to  repeat,  in  English,  say,  instead  of  in  Latin.  The  author  of  the 
fifteenth  century  "  Chastisyng  of  Goddes  Children  "  warns  his  readers  that 
when  "  a  man's  confessor  giveth  him  in  penance  to  say  his  Psalter  with- 
out any  other  words,  and  he  go  forth  and  say  it  in  English  and  not  in 
Latin,  as  it  was  ordained,  this  man,  I  ween,  doth  not  his  penance."  There 
was  the  graver  danger  that,  the  English  being  substituted  for  the  Latin,  the 
sacramental  effect  which  was  held  to  attach  to  the  mere  hearing  of  the 
Latin  words  should  be  lost.  The  author  of  the  fifteenth  century  "  Miroure 
of  our  Ladye  "  counsels  his  readers  to  use  his  Englishing  only  as  inter- 
pretative of  the  Latin.  The  English  might  be  kept  before  the  eye  at 
"  Mattyns,"  and  the  "  minde  fed  therewith,"  as  the  Latin  sounded  on  the 
ear,  the  listener  thus  "  going  forth  with  the  reader  clause  by  clause."  But 
it  is  added  :  "  This  looking  on  the  English  while  the  Latin  is  read,  is  to  be 
understood  of  them  that  have  said  their  matins  or  read  their  legend 
before.  For  else  I  would  not  counsel  them  to  leave  the  hearing  of  the 
Latin  for  entendaunce  of  the  English."  The  hearing  of  the  un-under- 
stood  Latin  was  more  beneficial  than  the  "  feeding  of  the  mind  "  with  the 
English  !  Behind  all  this  lay  a  profound  reverence  for  the  Latin  language 
itself  as  a  sacred  language,  begotten  of  its  long  employment  in  the 
Church  services ;  and  an  equal  reverence  for  the  Latin  Bible  as  sharing 
the  inspiration  of  the  Hebrew  and  Greek  :  coupled  with  contempt  for  the 
vernacular  speech  as  essentially  vulgar  and  incapable  of  serving  worthily 
as  the  vehicle  of  divine  truth.  Even  in  the  Constitution  prefixed  by 
Sixtus  V.  to  his  unfortunate  edition  of  the  Vulgate,  1590,  we  hear  of  the 


The  Bible,  the  Book  of  Mankind  13 

eternal  God  giving  his  Word  to  his  Church  in  the  three  chief  languages, 
Hebrew,  Greek  and  Latin.  The  matter  is  put  quite  plainly  by  the  author 
of  the  tractate  on  the  "  Chastisyng  of  Goddes  Children,"  which  has  already 
been  alluded  to.  "  Many  men  reproveth  to  hear  the  Psalter  or  Matins  or 
the  Gospel  in  English,  or  the  Bible,  because  they  may  not  be  translated 
into  no  vulgar  word  by  the  word  as  it  standeth  without  great  circumlocu- 
tion after  the  feeling  of  the  first  writers  which  translated  that  into  Latin 
by  the  teaching  of  the  Holy  Ghost."  Here  the  Latin  Bible  is  conceived 
as  inspired,  and  as  establishing  a  standard  for  the  expression  of  divine 
truth  for  all  time.  It  was  an  article  of  current  faith  that  it  passed  the 
wit  of  man  "for  to  show  in  any  manner  vulgar  the  terms  of  divinity." 
This  is  argued  at  length  in  the  decree  of  Archbishop  Berthold  of 
Mainz  (1485-6)  repressing  the  making  of  unauthorized  versions  in 
German.  "It  ought  to  be  allowed,"  he  reasons,  "that  the  indigence 
of  our  idiom  is  wholly  inadequate,  and  that  it  would  be  necessary 
that  they" — the  translators — "should  invent  unknown  words  out  of 
their  own  heads ;  or,  if  they  made  use  of  old  ones,  should  corrupt 
the  sense  of  the  truth,  so  that  we  fear  a  great  peril  with  regard  to 
the  sacred  books.  For  who  will  give  to  the  rude  and  unlearned  man, 
and  to  the  female  sex,  into  whose  hands  copies  of  the  sacred  books  might 
fall,  to  draw  out  the  true  sense?  "...  These  last  words  uncover,  how- 
ever, the  most  deeply  lying  reason  why  vernacular  versions  of  Scripture 
were  only  hesitatingly  put  forward.  It  was  feared  that  they  might  fall  into 
the  hands  of  the  people  ;  and  it  was  profoundly  believed  that  the  people 
could  not  be  trusted  with  them.  The  Scriptures  were  decidedly  not  for 
"  lewed  men."  On  this  the  Church  authorities  were  even  violently  insist- 
ent ;  and  they  were  prepared  to  go  all  lengths  to  prevent  them  from  fall- 
ing into  the  hands  of  "lewed  men."  The  author  of  the  pre-Wyckliffite 
English  version  published  by  Miss  Paues — a  version  made  at  the  request 
and  for  the  use  of  an  inmate  of  some  religious  house — does  his  work 
with  a  clear  understanding  that  he  was  incurring  personal  peril  by  doing 
it.  "  Brother,"  he  writes,  "  I  know  well  that  I  am  held  by  Christ's  law 
to  perform  thine  asking ;  but,  nevertheless,  we  be  now  so  far  fallen  away 
from  Christ's  law,  that  if  I  would  answer  to  thine  askings,  I  must  in  case 
undergo  the  death."  It  was  the  head  and  front  of  Wycliffe's  offending 
that,  as  Henry  Knighton  put  it,  he  made  the  gospel  vulgar,  casting  the 
pearl  of  the  gospel  before  swine,  and  so  turned  "  the  jewel  of  the  clerics" 
into  "  the  sport  of  the  lay  people."  Geiler  of  Kaisersberg  (fifteenth 
century)  expresses  in  an  epigram  the  whole  mediaeval  conception,  when 
he  declared  that  we  should  no  more  put  the  Scriptures  into  the  hands  of 
the  people  than  we  should  put  the  knife  into  the  hands  of  children  to  cut 
their  own  bread :  they  will  infallibly  injure  themselves  with  it. 

The  Bible  was,  thus,  as  far  as  possible  from  being  the  book  of  the 
people  in  the  Middle  Ages.    What  was  characteristic  of  the  Middle  Ages 


14  The  Bible,  the  Book  of  Mankind 

was  precisely  that  the  people  had  lost  their  Bible.  Efforts  were  made,  to 
be  sure,  as  the  night  passed  on  toward  the  dawn,  to  recover  it ;  efforts 
which  were  more  or  less  completely  blocked.  There  was  the  movement 
associated  with  the  name  of  Peter  Waldo,  which,  beginning  in  the  south- 
east of  France,  spread  southward  to  Italy  and  northward  into  Germany. 
There  was  another  movement  originating  in  northern  France,  and  extend- 
ing into  Flanders  and  Holland  and  beyond.  There  was  the  Wyckliffite 
movement  in  England,  which  was  transported  into  Bohemia.  Some  odd 
phenomena  attended  these  movements.  The  Waldensian  was  simply 
stamped  out  as  far  as  it  could  be  stamped  out.  The  German  was  winked 
at  until  it  almost  ceased  to  appear  illicit.  In  England  the  people  were 
uncompromisingly  denied  the  vernacular  Bible  ;  but  it  so  far  supplanted 
the  Latin  Bible  in  the  hands  of  the  clergy  and  the  great  that,  as  Henry 
Bradshaw  has  shown,  the  Latin  Bible  almost  ceased  to  be  copied  in  fif- 
teenth century  England — a  fact  strangely  misinterpreted  by  Cardinal  Gas- 
quet.  It  is  a  sad  history ;  but  it  ran  its  course.  And,  after  awhile,  the 
Reformation  came  and  the  people  got  back  their  Bible.  For  precisely 
what  the  Reformation  means  from  this  point  of  view  is  the  recovery  of 
the  Bible  for  the  people.  And  with  the  recovery  of  the  Bible  for  the 
people  there  was  recovered  also  for  them  the  power  of  reading  the  Bible. 
The  same  history  was  repeated  in  every  Protestant  land  which  was 
wrought  out  fifteen  hundred  years  before,  when  the  Bible  was  first  put 
into  the  hands  of  the  people.  The  people's  Bible  proved  itself  afresh  the 
greatest  force  making  for  popular  education  ever  introduced  into  the 
world.  Wherever  the  people's  Bible  went  there  popular  education  went. 
The  people  became  again  a  reading  people,  and  the  Bible  vindicated  to 
itself  anew  the  title  of  the  people's  book. 

Let  us  not  underestimate  what  this  carries  with  it.  It  is  not  merely 
that  under  pressure  of  the  necessity  of  reading  the  Bible  the  people  have 
learned  to  read,  incalculably  great  as  this  benefit  is.  It  is  also  that  the 
Bible,  being  read,  has  brought  an  immense  educative  force  to  bear  upon 
the  people.  It  would  be  impossible  to  overstate  the  part  the  Bible  has 
thus  played  in  the  education  of  the  world.  Lessing's  famous  representa- 
tion of  revelation  as  the  divine  education  of  the  human  race  has  had  its 
realization  in  an  unintended  sense  in  the  work  which  the  Bible  has  accom- 
plished as  the  great  school-book  of  humanity.  Children  learning  their 
"letters"  from  the  Biblical  page — this  has  been  a  widespread  custom 
from  the  earliest  Christian  ages — are  but  symbols  of  the  millions  upon 
millions  to  whom  the  Bible  has  been  their  first  text-book  in  letters,  in 
civilization,  in  morals,  as  well  as  in  religion.  Think  of  the  degraded 
peoples  to  whom  the  Bible,  a  gift  of  Christian  love,  has  brought  their  sole 
intimate  knowledge  of  conditions  of  human  existence  superior  to  their 
own  savagery.  Think  of  old,  inferior  civilizations — China,  India — to 
which  the  Bible  has  brought  the  elevating  contact  with  a  higher  moral 


The  Bible,  the  Book  of  Mankind  15 

and  spiritual  culture  which  was  needed  to  enable  them  to  rise  above 
themselves.  We  do  not  need  to  go  to  these  lower  civilizations.  Think 
of  the  untold  multitudes  in  even  the  most  cultured  lands  to  whom  these 
vivid  pages  alone  have  brought  the  vision  of  a  life  far  removed  from  the 
humdrum  routine  of  their  village  streets,  bridging  the  gulf  of  ages  and 
alien  custom  and  opening  an  outlook  into  a  different  world.  The  elevat- 
ing and  expanding  effect  of  the  reading  of  the  Bible  upon  backward 
peoples  and  isolated  communities  is  above  computation.  The  cultural 
influence  of  the  Bible  is  not  exhausted,  however,  in  such  effects.  What 
does  German  letters  owe  to  the  Bible  ?  it  has  been  asked.  And  the 
answer  returned  is,  It  owes  to  the  Bible  its  very  existence.  That  he 
might  give  to  the  Germanic  peoples  a  Bible  Ulfila  gave  them  an  alphabet 
and  written  speech  in  the  fourth  century.  And  in  regiving  the  Ger- 
man people  a  Bible  Luther  gave  them  a  common  literary  vehicle  in 
the  sixteenth  century.  "The  German  language,"  remarks  Ernst  von 
Dobschiitz,  "is  moulded  by  this  Bible.  ...  In  Luther's  time  the 
dialects  still  prevailed.  ...  It  is  unquestionably  due  to  Luther's 
Bible  that  the  Germans  have  one  language  for  all  literary  purposes."  If 
so  much  must  be  allowed  to  the  Bible  of  a  single  people,  what  shall  we 
say  of  the  Bible  of  a  whole  civilization,  like  the  Latin  Bible  ?  Its  impress 
upon  the  speech  of  the  whole  Western  world  is  ineffaceable.  Of  course 
no  really  historical  understanding  of  the  modern  Romance  languages  can 
be  obtained  without  reckoning  with  it.  It  has  colored  the  modes  of  ex- 
pression in  the  German  stock  also.  Far  beyond  supplying  to  Western 
speech  a  series  of  vocables,  however,  it  has  stamped  upon  the  Western 
mind  a  conceptual  language  which  has  determined  its  whole  spiritual 
physiognomy.  This  conceptual  language  has  penetrated  the  entirety  of 
Western  culture,  and  thus  the  Latin  Bible  has  wrought  powerfully  toward 
the  unification  of  the  Western  world  into  a  cultural  whole. 

We  approach  here  the  greatest  achievement  of  the  Bible  as  the  peo- 
ple's book.  Because  it  is  pre-eminently  the  book  of  the  people,  it  is  the 
greatest  unifying  force  in  the  world,  binding  all  the  peoples  together  as 
the  people  of  the  book.  Consider  how  the  Bible,  as  it  becomes  the  book 
of  people  after  people,  assimilates  the  peoples  to  one  another  in  modes  of 
expression,  thought,  conception,  feeling,  until  they  are  virtually  moulded 
into  one  people,  of  common  mind  and  heart.  The  Bible  comes  to  a  new 
people ;  this  alien  book— how  alien  it  is  to  those  who  first  come  to  know 
it ! — is  first  received,  then  assimilated,  and  in  the  end,  having  become  its 
heart's  treasure,  assimilates  it  to  itself.  Wherever  a  new  language  is 
thus  trained  to  speak  the  things  of  God,  a  new  tongue  has  been  created  to 
train  in  turn  all  who  speak  it  in  "  the  language  of  Canaan."  A  new  peo- 
ple, whatever  its  outward  forms  of  speech,  has  learned  the  language  of 
heaven.  Each  hears  the  same  mighty  things  of  God  in  his  own  tongue. 
Thus  a  new  common  humanity  has  grown  up  throughout  the  world.     The 


16  The  Bible,  the  Book  of  Mankind 

process  is  the  same  everywhere.  First  the  Bible  is  put  into  a  new  lan- 
guage, precisely  to  the  end  that  a  new  people  shall  learn  to  think  and  feel 
as  Christians  should  think  and  feel.  Then,  having  learned  to  think  and 
feel  as  Christians  should,  this  new  people  learns  also  to  speak  as  Chris- 
tians should.  Thus,  in  the  end,  a  common  language  in  all  that  goes  to 
make  the  inner  essence  of  language,  girdles  the  world.  If  you  find  your- 
self, says  Martin  Kaehler,  in  a  foreign  land,  weary  with  the  effort  to 
understand  its  strange  speech,  go  into  the  Church  and  listen  to  the  ser- 
mon and  the  prayers,  and  see  how  readily  they  slip  into  your  conscious- 
ness. You  are  listening  to  the  mother  speech  of  the  Book !  However 
different  the  mere  forms  of  speech  may  be,  one  essential  language  is 
employed  by  all  who  are  grounded  in  the  book.  "  The  Bible  capable  of 
translation  into  every  tongue,  and  already  translated  into  the  language  of 
every  stock  and  of  every  family  of  peoples,  has  actually  proved  its  form- 
ative power  over  the  higher  speech  of  ideas  of  a  humanity  destined 
for  unity."  This  book,  the  book  of  the  peoples  and  the  book  of  the 
people,  is  necessarily  the  book  of  humanity.  In  and  through  it,  human- 
ity realizes  its  unity  as  a  spiritual  entity,  one  in  speech,  one  in  thought, 
one  in  its  entire  spiritual  life. 

Let  it  be  observed  that  what  is  affirmed  is  not  merely  that  any  book 
which  is  widely  read  will  tend  to  bind  its  readers  together  in  a  spiritual 
unity,  and  that  the  Bible,  being  the  most  widely  read  of  books,  both 
among  the  peoples  and  among  the  people,  naturally  exerts  the  greatest 
of  unifying  influences  among  books.  It  is  affirmed  that  the  Bible  has 
shown  itself  in  history,  and  is  daily  showing  itself  more  and  more,  to 
possess  a  power  which  is  unique,  and  which,  when  all  is  said,  is  most 
arresting,  to  stamp  upon  its  readers  a  single  spiritual  physiognomy.  So 
impressive  is  this  fact  that  Martin  Kaehler,  for  example — with  a  reference 
to  whose  fruitful  characterization  of  the  Bible  as  the  book  of  man- 
kind we  began,  and  from  whose  instructive  development  of  that  theme  we 
have  never  wandered  very  far — observing  the  unifying  influence  of  the 
Bible  on  the  world  of  men  is  impelled  to  discover  in  it  a  proof  of  its 
divinity.  Side  by  side  with  the  effect  of  the  Bible  on  the  heart  of  the 
individual  who  finds  in  it  his  inspiration  to  a  holy  life,  there  must  be 
recognized  its  effect  on  the  hearts  of  the  peoples,  fashioning  them  into  one 
spiritual  type.  Nay,  says  Kaehler,  side  by  side  with  the  testimony  of  the 
Holy  Spirit  borne  in  the  heart  of  the  individual  that  this  book  is  from 
God,  is  the  testimony  of  history  to  the  Bible,  borne  in  the  heart  of 
humanity,  that  a  book  filled  with  such  regenerating  power  for  the  race  is 
from  God.  For  there  is,  history  itself  being  witness,  a  truly  regenerat- 
ing power  in  the  Bible.  And  it  is  because,  wherever  it  goes  it  creates  a 
new  humanity — a  humanity  informed  by  a  new  spirit  and  filled  with  a  new 
life — that  it  is  the  great  unifying  power  which  it  is. 

9,  15 :  100 


Gaylord  Bros. 

Makers 
Syracuse,  N.  Y. 

P»T.  JAN.  21.  1M8 


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